Low birth weight and parenting stress during early childhood.

Identified factors associated with parenting stress among the parents of low birth weight children participating in a prospective longitudinal study. The child's development status and the quality of the infant-parent relationship contributed to early childhood parenting stress beyond the contribution of neonatal medical risk, which was a significant predictor until the concurrent measure of child development status was entered in the regression analysis. Results are consistent with a model of processes underlying the experiences of parents of medically vulnerable infants presented by the Goldberg and Marcovitch (1986) model. Replication of these findings among parents of specific subgroups of low birth weight children represents a direction for future research.